Tehran, Iran, May 6
Trend:
Iranian Deputy Minister of Economy Hossein Mir-Shojaeian has indicated using coupons has its pros and cons, while the foreign exchange policy is being evaluated.
Referring to the possible use of coupons for distributing goods, he said, "This option has both advantages and shortcomings. If we can use tools like bank cards and target specific goods, it can be a good system," Trend reports citing ILNA.
"There have been suggestions about various mechanisms. For example, one of them is to assign coupons to bank cards or to sellers after the purchase, which means transferring the money from treasury after each purchase, so there would not be amount of money available in the bank cards," he added.
Talking about installation of boxes for valued added tax in stores, he said, "Any efforts to create transparency would be helpful to the Iranian National Tax Administration. Development of this initiative is certainly time consuming, since our economy has vast retailing system and we have to deal with retailers. The project will be expensive, but hopefully it would be implemented."
Speaking about possible removal of official foreign currency rate of 42,000 rial per dollar for basic goods he said, "It was a collective decision made by the government. It should be noted that the aim of using official foreign currency exchange rate of 42,000 rial was to avoid price increase, but the price of some goods jumped up uncontrollably."
He noted, "The foreign exchange policy was effective for some goods like medicine, therefore the government is evaluating the policy to see whether or not it should be continued."